Address:
2520 Cimarron St.
Los Angeles, CA 90018
Phone:
(310) 794-5155
Email:
clark@humnet.ucla.edu
The Oscar Wilde holdings at the Clark Library are the largest and most significant in the world and include nearly every edition of every printed book by and about Wilde, in addition to a large number of his literary manuscripts and correspondence. The Library collects Wilde's works in translation in as many languages as possible, as well as materials related to his wider social circle and the generations of artists, writers, and queer activists immediately before and after Wilde. Other collections are related to contemporary social movements, theater, bibliophilic clubs, and university life.
The Library's collection of "Wildeiana" (works about or related to Wilde) consists of photographs, caricatures, portraits, news clippings, theater programs, sheet music, and other ephemeral and novelty items, which document Wilde's continuing influence in popular culture. Forgeries of Wilde's work also document the growing value of his work in the marketplace, as forgers, psychics, and others capitalized on his popularity in the 1920s. The Library has important collections of the forged works produced by several of his most prolific imitators and admirers.
The Library's mid-19th-century (1830-1885) holdings have largely reflected Clark, Jr.'s early collecting interests, before he began focusing on Oscar Wilde and John Dryden. Highlights in this early part of the collection include most major works in first editions by Lord Byron, Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats, Charles Lamb, and Walter Scott, as well as a wide variety of gothic novelists. In the Victorian era, major British writers in the collection include Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Alfred Tennyson, William Morris, the Bronte sisters (Charlotte, Emily, and Anne), William Makepeace Thackeray, George Eliot, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and an extensive collection of Charles Dickens works in their original serial parts. Clark, Jr. also collected liberally in American novelists and poets of this era, and the collection contains many early editions of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allan Poe, and Herman Melville.
To find items, especially print and published, by/about/related to Oscar Wilde, go to UC Library Search. To limit by author, title, or a number of other options, click on "Advanced Search," next to the general search box. Once you have search results, you can limit to the Clark Library by selecting it from the Locations facet on the left-hand side.
To find printed books, broadsides, maps, periodicals, bound manuscripts, and other discrete items from this period, go to UC Library Search. To limit by date, click on "Advanced Search," next to the general search box. Once you have search results, you can limit to the Clark Library by selecting it from the "UCLA Locations" facet on the left-hand side.
For detailed inventories of archival collections, please consult our LibGuide to archives at the Clark or the Clark Library's page on the Online Archive of California (OAC).
Ye Sette of Odd Volumes — Clark online exhibition (2013)